Making students more engaged

Research suggests that actively engaged students do best at school.  But how do we encourage students to become more engaged?

Engagement in terms of schooling is defined as the personal ingredient that actively helps individual students reach their full potential.  Put simply, without engagement it is harder for students to make the most of their talents and their opportunities.

In this regard the results of The Gallup® Student Poll make interesting reading.  For this survey has, for many years, been measuring the levels of student engagement, a measure which relates to involvement in and enthusiasm for school.

This survey includes amongst its findings the fact that engaged students are over four times as likely as their actively disengaged peers to be hopeful about the future.

Which raises an interesting point.  A realistically hopeful person is quite obviously more likely to succeed in any quest than a person who travels with no hope of success.

Thus, if engagement is a clear measure of hope for the future, how do we ensure that our students are “engaged” with school life rather than be found in Gallup’s alternative categories of “not engaged” and “actively disengaged.”

One possible solution is to take one’s students who appear from everyday observation to be “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” and help them to understand that, despite their current vision of school, they do have a number of positive attributes and opportunities.

This interesting journey towards a different view of life is made available by GetSet from Belbin; a questionnaire-based way of helping students find out about their own strengths and talents.  Something that can help them find a more positive expression of who and what they are – and indeed what they could become in the future.

To help you see the value that can be gained from this approach, we are very happy to offer you or one of your students the chance to take the GetSet questionnaire yourself at no cost or obligation.

To apply for a free questionnaire please click here – click “contact us” at the top of the page and write “a free one please” in the box.

To read more about GetSet please do look at our website: www.belbingetset.com .   Or if you have any questions please email getset@belbin.com or phone 01223 264975.

Lisa Ward

Information reproduced with kind permission of Gallup. More information on the 2016 Gallup student poll can be found at: http://news.gallup.com/reports/210995/6.aspx